


(Can We Be Friends?)

by summerisokay



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - College/University, Established Sirius Black/Remus Lupin, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Found Family, Good Parents Euphemia and Fleamont Potter, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, M/M, Marauders, Mentioned Peter Pettigrew, Mentioned Severus Snape, Modern Marauders (Harry Potter), Pining James Potter, Recovery, Sirius Black & James Potter Friendship, Suicidal Thoughts, Therapy, but this isn't a total downer I swear
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-08
Updated: 2021-03-01
Packaged: 2021-03-13 19:35:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,303
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29283870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/summerisokay/pseuds/summerisokay
Summary: James Potter knows he’s an asshole, drunk or sober- but he’s a funnier asshole when he’s drunk, so that’s how he prefers to be. He has no desire to change until his parents send him to a substance abuse treatment program, where he meets a boy in need of a friend (that isn’t an asshole).
Relationships: Euphemia Potter/Fleamont Potter, James Potter/Lily Evans Potter, Sirius Black/Remus Lupin
Comments: 11
Kudos: 25





	1. You'll Never Make It Like That

**Author's Note:**

> CONTENT WARNINGS- substance abuse is central to the story and will be discussed in every chapter. Future chapters may reference child abuse, homophobia, and suicidal ideation. The focus of this story is recovery, and none of these topics will be romanticized.

“You understand that your participation in this program is voluntary, Mr. Potter?”

“Yes, I do.” James shifted uncomfortably in the vinyl seat of the hospital’s front desk.

“Perfect! I’ll just need you to sign here,” said the cheerful man on the other side of the desk, named Rube according to the plate in front of him. James looked up from his hands, already stained with ink from filling out countless forms, to sign the new one.

In the world where James had spent the previous year, someone like Rube would be the odd one out, pushing 50 on a campus swimming with privileged 20-somethings. His shabby and mismatched clothes would be subject to the derision and avoidance of students in athleisure and Instagram-perfect outfits, though his height would be envied by the frat boys with their fragile masculinity.

But here, in the behavioral health ward of the Gold Phoenix Clinic, James was the one who didn’t belong. His aggressively red team hoodie, paired with brand new and clearly overpriced sweatpants and sneakers, did little to help him blend in with his fellow patients. He imagined them staring at him- much too affluent, too young, too naïve to have real problems.

He couldn’t help but agree.

Rube barely blinked at the moping boy as he retrieved the signed form. He handed back a plain white binder. “Here’s your schedule,” he said, thick accent turning “your” into something closer to “yer.” “And just about everything else you could need. Any questions?”

“No,” he lied.

“On your way, then, Mr. Potter! You’re meeting with Dr. Figg first. Her office is second on the right, straight down that hallway.” James nodded and stood up, squinting his eyes against the headache that roared in complaint, and turned to his parents.

He’d always known they were older than most parents of a 19-year-old only child, but witnessing that child’s near-death experience seemed to have aged them even more. Neither looked like they had slept in days. Still, his mother stood quickly to hug him, arms wrapped around to smooth down his purposefully mussed hair. For once, he didn’t stop her.

His dad was next, his hug less desperate but equally firm. “Make good choices,” he muttered to his son, before letting go.

James gave them a weak wave, his usual bravado failing him under his need to get away from their pity and pain as quickly as possible. Drawstring bag in one hand and new binder in the other, he descended into the hallway.

—————

The intensive outpatient program had all the makings of a school, with severe supervisors (he was too intimidated by Dr. Moody’s withering stare to laugh at the irony of the man’s name) and days divided into group therapy sessions that sounded more like a class than a feelings-jam.

James couldn’t have felt more comfortable with this structure. He’d never had the time to get out of his usual school mindset, anyways. After finals week came the finals party, then the hospital, then showing up for treatment on Monday.

He’d also gone to classes with a hangover, and his headache felt like an extension of that. Still, no amount of experience in that area kept him from spacing off.

“Mr. Potter?”

The voice of the group leader jolted him out of space. He rubbed his head, trying to remember what he needed to say, but coming up blank

“What was the question?”

“How are you feeling this afternoon?” The woman, named Bathilda but referred to as Tilda by the others, seemed endlessly patient. As much as he had expected judgement from his peers, they also seemed patient. They either gave him encouraging looks, like the short-haired woman to his right, or ignored him entirely, like the quiet boy in the corner- one of the youngest in the room, along with James.

“I’m fine,” James said, eager for once to get the attention off of himself.

Tilda gave a sympathetic look. “I know it’s your first day,” she said. “Does anyone have some helpful tips for Mr. Potter?”

“James.”

“James,” she corrected easily before addressing the others again. “Anything you wish you’d known on your first day?”

The woman to his right- Alice, he recalled- was the first to speak. “It’s okay to be nervous,” she said. “But you can be honest with all of us. Really. It’s the only way to start getting better.”

James noticed the boy across the room scoff at that answer. Tilda seemed happy with it, though, and moved ahead with the cheer of one too accustomed with melancholy for it to affect her.

—————

By the end of the day, James had learned all about “coping skills,” diligently jotting down the list of activities suggested as distractions from the vaguely-referenced “feelings” they all sought to escape. He had also learned that the other boy was a fellow 19-year-old, named Sirius, who was extremely unhappy about being there if his constant one-word answers were any indication.

In another universe, he could have been James’s rebellious twin- a leather jacket instead of a soccer hoodie and Doc Martens instead of sneakers, but similar heights and similar dark hair (though James could never make his that smooth and sleek, even if he tried). He would’ve loved to joke with his parents at the end of the day about discovering his “long lost brother,” but even a lighthearted joke felt tasteless when he slid into the car and saw his father looking somehow more tired than he had that morning.

After the silent drive home, he fled to his room. He began unpacking his dorm belongings, haphazardly boxed up by his roommate, Peter. In spite of this momentary irritation, he grinned at the thought of talking to his friend once he got his phone back.

His smile quickly faded, the latter half of the thought leaving a sour taste in his mouth.

Above all else, it was humiliating. Not even as a child had James been grounded. He knew he was generally an asshole, taking every joke too far and only realizing it when someone (Lily Evans, usually) yelled at him to apologize. But he had always been a perfect son.

He still had all the makings of one- in college on a lucrative soccer scholarship (for the principle of it, not the money, as he had somewhat tastelessly boasted before), majoring in business to follow in his father’s entrepreneurial footsteps. He was brave, confident, charming- and so, so loved. More than he deserved. But none of it seemed to be enough to make them look at him the way they did before.

After what felt like hours but had likely been only minutes, the discomfort in his head, now spread to the rest of his body, became too overwhelming to ignore. He fell back on the bed and closed his eyes.

He hadn’t realized he was falling asleep until a knock on his door startled him awake. He grunted in response, unsure which parent had entered the room until his dad sat on the bed next to him. “How are you doing?” he asked softly.

“Just tired. Head hurts.” He felt his dad’s hand gently patting down his hair. Relieved by not needing to say more, James drifted back into sleep, vague thoughts swirling in his mind about how the past year had made truth and love incompatible.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Main Title- (Can We Be Friends?) by Conan Gray  
> Chapter Title- Skinny Skinny by Ashton Irwin
> 
> I am completely new to this community and writing these characters. I would be so grateful for feedback, and hope to publish another chapter this week!


	2. There's A Cynical Feeling

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: Substance abuse is discussed in greater detail than in the previous chapter.

Each hour after “the incident,” as he had taken to calling it, inched him closer to his usual self. By the start of group sessions the next morning, he was feeling bold enough to stride in and take the empty seat next to Sirius, though still too tired to start a conversation. The other boy didn’t seem to notice, continuing to stare straight ahead as check-ins began.

James had graduated from his cold “I’m fine” the day before to a wordy description of traffic on the drive in. To avoid thinking about the air of unease in the car, he focused instead on the deer that had crossed the road in front of them.

“We’re in the middle of the city,” he laughed, “what the hell was it doing? Was it just, like, grabbing Starbucks on its way back to the forest?” The accidental pun delighted him. “Get it? ‘Bucks,’ and it’s a deer-“

“Thank you, James.” Tilda cut him off with a good-natured smile. He accepted that Alice’s (somewhat pitying) laugh was the only applause he would be receiving.

Tilda continued on to the topic of the session: social connections. James tuned out almost immediately. If anything, he was _too_ social. He hoped absently that Dr. Figg would choose this session to pull him out, but it dragged on in a sludge interrupted only by lunch.

To James’s shock and dismay, he learned that the afternoon schedule began with art therapy (was that even a real thing?). He stared dubiously at the boxes of crayons and markers plopped on the table and, not for the first time, contemplated every decision that had gotten him there.

Thankfully, the vague prompt to “create something that represents what you’re most proud of” came with surprising ease. He grabbed markers in red and yellow (the closest substitute he could find for gold) and set about drawing his soccer jersey.

There were multiple disciplines in which James would consider himself competent- athletics, of course, and math and science. Art was not on that list. He willed his hand to produce something that resembled a shirt, but his first attempt resulted in something closer to the T-shaped Tetris block. He tried to change his strategy, drawing the sleeves first instead, but placed them so close together that the shirt looked more like an arrow.

After a few minutes of frustration, he gave up and decided to do what he typically would in a class like this. He glanced at Sirius, who was ignoring the activity with measured disinterest.

The room was silent, and James was never one to shy away from breaking a silence, but he thought Sirius might murder him on the spot. He decided instead to write on the corner of his paper and inch it into the other’s line of sight.

_Hard to draw if you don’t pick up a pen,_ he had written. Sirius scoffed, which seemed to be his signature move, and grabbed a marker with startling determination.

James tried to ignore the feeling of disappointment when it became clear that Sirius was not writing a reply to him. He turned back to his own drawing, working halfheartedly until a harsh elbow in his side startled him out of it.

He tried to be offended, but was mostly impressed when Sirius presented him with a cartoonish sketch of a deer wearing wire-rimmed glasses, uncannily similar to those that James himself wore, with what looked like a Starbucks cup caught in its antlers. While the car had been the antagonist in James’s check-in story, this deer was terrorized instead by an oversized dog, angry teeth bared.

Struggling to hold in a laugh, James wrote another message on his own paper. _I don’t think dogs are the same size as deer._

Sirius wrote back this time. _This dog is special. And how do you know it’s not a wolf?_

_Wolves don’t have floppy ears._

_STFU. You’re not one to judge art._ Sirius drew an arrow pointing to the misshapen t-shirts dotting the paper.

James turned to Sirius in mock offense, surprised to see the other’s gray eyes newly alight with mischief. By the end of the session, neither one had anything to share with the group, James out of embarrassment and Sirius out of stubbornness. James had no siblings, but he found himself wondering if this easy banter might be a glimpse into a life where he did.

—————

Dr. Figg, while not as effusive as Tilda, had a quiet sort of kindness to her. Maybe it was the framed pictures of cats that filled her office, but James felt comfortable with her.

“I was hoping I’d see you today,” he said as he sat in the plush chair and next to her desk.

“Has something happened?” He kicked himself mentally for not considering that implication.

“No,” he said quickly. “I just meant- uh- I already knew all that social stuff. I didn’t really need to be in the main session.”

She nodded, saying nothing, but he couldn’t help but try to quell the questions he felt brewing.

“Like I said yesterday, I’m pretty good with relationships. My family is great, my friends are great. Everything is great.” Excluding his undying love for a particularly fiery chemistry major who hated his guts, at least. As Peter told him frequently, that wasn’t a relationship- it was an entirely one-sided obsession.

“What do you hope to get from this program?” Dr. Figg asked eventually. The question was much more tactful than what James knew they were both wondering: why was he even there?

He wasn’t sure of the right answer, a feeling that had become disturbingly familiar in the course of a week. “I don’t know. I’m here for my parents.”

“Could you tell me what you mean by that?” she asked without missing a beat, confirming his suspicion that he had indeed given the wrong answer.

“They’re worried about me after… after what happened. So they sent me here.”

“You said that you have a good relationship with them?”

“Of course. They’re the best parents I could ask for.”

“I’m glad to hear that,” she said with a faint smile. “It’s important to have a solid support system. But do you have any goals of your own?”

He definitely didn’t know the right answer to this one. “Not really. This isn’t something that happens a lot- with the alcohol, I mean. I’ll be fine. I just want to reassure them.”

She glanced briefly at the notepad she held in her lap, though James doubted that she needed to. “My understanding after your intake session was that binge drinking has been a frequent occurrence since you began college in the fall.”

“It’s college,” he said, by way of explanation. “Everyone drinks too much.” His mind offered the unbidden image of Lily Evans standing in the corner of a party, cherry cola in hand, glaring at James as he took his fourth or fifth shot of the hour. “Almost everyone,” he conceded.

“Alcohol abuse is certainly an issue on college campuses.”

“I only went too far once,” he said stubbornly. “It won’t happen again.”

“I understand, Mr. Potter, but-“

“James. Please.”

“James,” she said, sounding slightly more irritated than Tilda had when corrected, “I’m glad to hear that you have such a growth mindset, but the first step in recovery is acknowledging that you have a problem in the first place.”

He stopped just short of arguing that he didn’t have a problem, recalling the anxious stare from Lily’s friend as the two of them watched James take yet another shot. He didn’t even know the guy, but he’d looked at James like he was seeing a ghost.

_Getting drunk every night isn’t normal, Potter._ That one was Lily herself, her voice imprinted in his mind from one Wednesday afternoon when he stumbled past her, too hungover for his usual attempts at flirting.

_A little early for that, eh, mate?_ Now it was Peter’s timid voice, watching nervously as he prepared to leave for class while James took another beer from their mini fridge. 

The image that did him in was Severus’s sneer as they begrudgingly met to complete the chemistry project that Dr. Slughorn grouped them together for. _I’m surprised they haven’t expelled you yet. I could smell the alcohol from down the hall._ Though James doubted that this was true, it was infuriating beyond belief that Snivellus could cause him doubt in the first place.

“I know I have a problem,” he conceded, running a hand through his hair in an absently calming gesture. “But that doesn’t mean it’ll happen again."

“A problem like this does not begin and end when it threatens your life. I’m here to help you work through what happened before. Group sessions are there to help you prepare for what comes after. But just going through the motions for your parents won’t help anyone.”

“Okay. I get it.” She wouldn’t stop giving him that look- the pitying, plying look he had been getting from everybody for days. “I get it,” he repeated, not caring enough to keep the edge out of his voice.

She didn’t push him to say more, looking resigned to where the conversation had gone. He stayed silent when he returned to the group, surprised when nobody there pushed him, either- though he could’ve sworn he saw Sirius watching closely from the corner of his eye.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Title- Cynical by blink-182
> 
> Thank you to everyone who has read this so far. It means the world to me, and I apologize for taking so long to update. As before, I would be so grateful for feedback!


	3. I'm Nearly Bored To Death

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: References to homophobia

If Sirius recalled James’s somber mood from the end of the previous day, he didn’t show it, which was a relief after yet another night under his parents’ loving but stiflingly watchful eyes. Trading knowing smirks through a morning of “mindfulness” exercises that neither of them could endure with a straight face, James felt more normal than he had in days- months, really.

Still, eating a packed lunch made him feel like a child, a feeling that only intensified as he ate without a phone to look at. 

“How much longer do we have?” Sirius asked.

James, noting with amusement that this was the longest sentence he had ever heard from Sirius, flipped open his binder to the schedule page. “Ends at 12:30. What time is it now?”

Sirius brought up the lock screen on his phone, showing him the time (12:28) as well as his wallpaper. He recognized Sirius’s face immediately, slightly younger, gray eyes shining with something much softer than the mischief that James was growing familiar with. The figure in his arms covered his own face with a hand, blocking out both the camera flash and the possibility of recognition, but he seemed almost as joyful as Sirius did. 

“Who’s that?” James asked. 

Sirius quickly locked the screen again, glancing warily at him. He eventually shrugged a non-answer and turned back to his food, away from the conversation that James had only just realized the weight of. 

Shit. He didn’t want to push, but couldn’t quiet the nagging voice in his mind (which sounded like Lily Evans, as always) that told him to reassure Sirius. “Hey. You don’t...” He trailed off, cursing himself for still not knowing what to say. “I, uh, I don’t-“

“Don’t what?” Sirius snapped. 

“I don’t have a problem with it,” he said quickly. Sirius gave him a questioning look, and James hurriedly nodded his head towards the now-darkened phone screen. “I’m not, you know, but my-” he hesitated over what to call Lily- “someone, her friend is gay.” 

It sounded ridiculous as it came out of his mouth. He dropped his head in his hands, heedless of crushing his glasses. No wonder Lily thought he was an asshole. 

He decided it would be best to laugh it off, cautiously looking up to make eye contact. To his surprise, Sirius’s shoulders shook with his own poorly suppressed laugh. They finally cracked up, tension forgotten as they leaned into each other like old friends. 

—————

_Who’s your “someone?”_

It was a relief when Sirius scrawled the message on the corner of James’ notepad. He wasted no time in responding, the warm thought of Lily’s smile drowning out the dull and uncomfortable thrum of the “addiction education” session occurring around them. 

_A classmate. She kinda hates me, so we’re not friends. I’m kinda in love with her, so we’re not acquaintances. Thus, “someone.”_ He tried to appear more nonchalant than he felt.

Sirius circled the “she” pronoun. _What?! I had no idea you were straight._

James, impressed with how much sarcasm Sirius managed to imbue in the penciled words, replied. _Could be bi. You don’t know me._

_If you were, you probably would’ve said YOU were gay, not that your “someone’s” friend is._

_Haha._ He paused, remembering his earlier blunder. _Sorry for being weird._

_It’s okay. I’ve heard much worse._

Uncertain of what he could say without revealing himself as even more ignorant than he already appeared to be, he changed the subject. _So, your wallpaper?_

Sirius hesitated, too, but apparently decided to answer. _My boyfriend. Since high school._

_Sweet._

Their conversation lulled as Tilda’s lesson moved from the science of addiction to the warning signs. James’s mind wandered to a world where he and Lily were high school sweethearts, like Sirius and his boyfriend. Maybe she would’ve liked him more before he showed those warning signs, the “lack of control” and “troubling drinking patterns” that Tilda listed on a whiteboard at the front of the room.

Deep down, he doubted that his drinking problem had actually caused her disdain for him- they met on the first day of classes, long before his downward spiral had begun.

The note paper shifted under his arm as Sirius wrote. _Feel like it’s a little late to learn the warning signs. We’re already here._ James didn’t catch his laugh before it burst out, an embarrassing sort of half-snort.

Everyone, including Tilda, turned to him. “Did you want to add anything, James?” she said, her tone only slightly less sharp than his usual professors would be (the thought of Dr. McGonagall leading group therapy made him want to laugh even more). He shook his head hurriedly.

“Feel like it’s a little late to learn the warning signs," Sirius said aloud. "We’re already here.” James jolted back to the reality of the silent boy he had met two days before, wildly different from the one that sat next to him now and leaned his chair back on two legs.

“That’s a good question, Mr. Black,” Tilda said, too surprised to keep any sort of edge in her voice. “It can be helpful in understanding and accepting how your situation came to be, and to better prepare yourself for the future.”

Sirius gave a dramatic nod of comprehension, smiling with surprising charm as she continued.

 _She took you pretty Sirius-ly, huh?_ James wrote.

_STFU._

—————

Just as quickly as his walls had come down, James watched Sirius build them back up. He was laughing with Alice, who seemed grateful to have found a fellow extrovert in the generally reticent group, until they emerged from the hallway and into the lobby of the hospital.

Sirius’ smile disappeared with schooled ease as he diverged from the group trickling through the front doors, posture rigid as he walked to a BMW that looked horribly out of place in the parking lot. He didn’t look back.

James caught a glimpse of a severe-looking woman in the driver’s seat before Sirius shut the passenger door with more force than seemed necessary. He wondered whether hers was one of the “worse reactions” Sirius had referenced earlier.

In stark contrast, James's mother greeted him with a hug in their car (still out of place in the hospital parking lot, though not to the extent of the Black family’s). Gratitude washed through him, both for his mother’s kinder temperament and for the way her stress seemed to decrease with every day between them and “the incident."

“How was your day?” she asked as he pulled on his seatbelt.

“It was good. Made a friend,” he said.

“Of course you are. You could make a friend anywhere. Speaking of which,” she said, reaching into the car door on her side, “your dad and I talked about it, and we think you should have your phone back.”

“Really?” He accepted the device from her hand gladly, any lingering resentment evaporating.

“We trust you, and we know you miss your friends from school. And you deserve it after working so hard these past few days.” She hugged him again, and he ignored the rising tide of guilt that threatened to overtake him. How low had he placed the bar, if surviving the weekend was now a cause for celebration?

He sifted through his notifications on the drive home, most of them marketing emails and gradebook entries. He noticed with some surprise that there were no messages from Peter, but figured that he was waiting to hear from James first. He typed out a quick text.

He hadn’t expected to hear from Lily, but couldn’t help his disappointment when he confirmed that the remaining texts were not from her. Instead, they came from an unknown number, whose owner was not difficult to identify.

_You still have my textbook._

He rolled his eyes. Though he could barely remember a moment of the party, there was little doubt in his mind that Severus had also been there, clinging to Lily, as usual. He surely knew the reason behind James’s disappearance. Not for the first time, he cursed the particularly bad hangover that had kept him from class while Professor Slughorn was assigning the final lab groups.

_Busy week. I’ll just Venmo you._

The response came immediately. Didn’t he have anything better to do? _I expect MY copy returned to me promptly._

 _Okay. I’ll give it to Lily._ James doubted that he would be seeing her anytime soon, but relished in the knowledge that the suggestion would bother Snivellus.

The last notification was from Hogwarts University, the subject too long to read as a preview: “Message from the Office of the Dean…” Expecting a generic year-end congratulatory letter, he opened it. 

He felt the wind knocked out of him, like he had wiped out in the mud during a game. Reading about the “termination of your soccer team membership and accompanying scholarship” shouldn't count as the worst thing to happen to him that week. He could have died on Friday night.

But somehow, this was worse.

 _Fuck,_ he thought. _I need a drink._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Title- Bored To Death by blink-182
> 
> I have a Tumblr now! You can follow me [here](http://summerisokayatwriting.tumblr.com/). Thank you to everyone who has read and supported this story- I appreciate your patience as I stumble through timing my updates. I plan for the next one to arrive this Sunday.


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